Nobody Needs a House with 8 Toilets

The Declining Marginal Returns of Real Estate

I grew up in a house with eight people and three toilets. You’re smart, so you’ve probably already done the math in your head:

8 people / 3 Toilets = .375 Toilets Per Person (TPP)

Considered from a global perspective, this represents a plethora of porcelain! But international wealth equality is not on the mind of a ten-year-old who is trying not to pee his pants while one of his three sisters is locked in the bathroom curling her hair.

This scarcity-induced trauma instilled in me a lifelong yearning for lavatorial autonomy. So it should come as no surprise that today I live in a house with eight toilets to serve its four residents. Now, my wife, kids, and I are literally surrounded by toilets (see image).

While I am happier to have more choices, five times as many toilets per person has not rewarded me with 500% more life satisfaction. It’s definitely better, but it’s also a comical reminder that we often overspend on crap—sometimes literally—with the idea that buying the things we lack will get us closer to personal fulfillment.

There’s truth to the expression, “The things you own end up owning you,” but it’s not equally applicable to all purchases. Some of the ways we’ve spent on our home provide significant value. Other things, less so. For example, I turned a storage room in our basement into a little gym that I use five times per week. It was a home run investment.

Our pool, on the other hand, is an under-utilized money pit. As the kids get older, we swim less and less but the monthly bills keep coming. I also lack the technical expertise to know if the pool guy is scamming me when he says, “The sand filter needs replacing because the O-ring is worn out.” I hear this and think, “O-ring? Isn’t that what brought down the space shuttle?” Then I fork over $800 or whatever it costs to replace a two-dollar piece of plastic.

Similarly, more toilets mean higher plumber bills, especially if your builder installed high-end German plumbing for which replacement parts must be flown in First Class on Lufthansa.

To be clear, I am not whining about owning a big house or lamenting my own consumerist obsessions. I like stuff. But it’s clear that most of us have a tendency to consume well past the point of satiation, and the housing market has evolved to enable this inclination. According to Census.org, the percentage of newly built U.S. homes with 2.5 bathrooms or more tripled from 1978 until 2016, and those with 3+ bathrooms almost quintupled.  Americans love toilets!

Are there more people living in each home? No. In fact, average residents per household decreased during this time by 16%—from 3.01 to 2.54—while home size increased by 61% to 2,687 square feet. So those dirty ’70s hippies had 551 square feet each, and the average, clean 2015 person enjoyed 1,057 square feet.

I’m part of the problem. My parents’ 2,251 square-foot home provided just over 280 square feet for each of its eight inhabitants (until my older siblings finally moved out). My current 6,450 square-foot home accommodates each of us with 1,612 square feet but isn’t even close to the biggest house in our neighborhood. Some dude down the street just built a 15,000-foot monster, which is rumored to have a 20-car garage in the basement to showcase his vintage Porsches and Ferraris. It makes our place look positively quaint.

So what’s the optimal home size? I don’t know and the question is complicated by the fact that a home is static while our needs are fluid. We bought this place when my kids were basically infants. Back then, I just wanted enough space so that I didn’t have to take my shoes off as soon as I walked in the door for fear of waking a sleeping baby. That was absolutely the case in our previous home, a 1,500-square-foot Los Angeles bungalow.

Now that they’re teenagers, I would happily trade interior space for a bigger yard in which we could kick the soccer ball around for however many fleeting evenings they might agree to do so. In six years, they’ll both be out of high school and we will, presumably, be empty-nesters banging around a big ol’ lonely shell.

Since spatial requirements change over time, it would be a lot easier if houses were made of Play-Doh. You could just add a little space when you need it, then subtract as your needs decline. But that’s not reality, so we just buy the most we can afford, stick with it for a certain number of years, and then correct during life’s inflection points.

Despite anecdotal stories about van life and tiny homes, I don’t see the trend reversing any time soon. The pandemic drove sales of second homes to record levels, and I bet you can guess who succumbed to this trend. That’s right, yours truly is currently typing at 4,000 feet above sea level, surrounded by the Blue Ridge Mountains and seven additional toilets. What could possibly go wrong?

It’s a massive privilege but also totally absurd how, as we fulfill one desire, a new one creeps in. Not long ago, I was playing golf with a well-known comedian who grew up in a one-toilet house. After explaining my theory of bathroom opulence to him, I asked what his current TPP was.

“I don’t know,” he said, taking the cigar from his mouth, “Should I count the shitter on my plane?” 

THE END

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This week on Crazy Money:

If you haven’t heard it yet, you should check out my recent interview with 7-time New York Times best-seller, Bruce Feiler about his new book, The Search: Finding Meaningful Work in a Post-Career World. He’s kind of a big deal. Listen here.

Lots of new episodes in the works. Hope your summer is going great.